I expirence a teribble noise coming from DTE equipment in my area. I contacted the utility and asked for help, they opened a case and admitted that the problem does exist. It's been a couple of months since then and nobody contact me at all.

Anyone here from Detroit Metro (DTE area) had or has a similar issue? Any experience how to effectively deal with them? Please advice.

I expirence a teribble noise coming from DTE equipment in my area. I contacted the utility and asked for help, they opened a case and admitted that the problem does exist. It's been a couple of months since then and nobody contact me at all.

Anyone here from Detroit Metro (DTE area) had or has a similar issue? Any experience how to effectively deal with them? Please advice.

73,MarioKC8P

The power company is required to correct this issue, if they are generating the RFI. If you have the admission of it being their fault in writing, keep it. I had an issue with my power company and here was my plan.

1. Start a log of all Power Company contacts, and who I spoke to, and the result of that discussion.2. Download S-Meter Lite, and run it for a week. Keeping all the graphs of RFI.3. I contacted the power company and included the graphs in my contact, letting them know their RFI is a problem for me.4. I had intended on waiting a reasonable time. 30 or so days, and had intended on keeping graph generation going with S-Meter Lite.5. If nothing had happened, I would have recontacted them, and reminded them politely that this is not an issue that is going to go away, and they need to correct it.6. If they had continued to blow me off, I would have contacted someone up stream from the person I was dealing with, like a board member.7. If I were still being ignored, I would have written Mike Gruber at the ARRL, and included my notes/logs, etc.

My power company became actively involved at step 3. I added everything important to my log, leaving out my feelings, etc. The log might become a legal document, so kept it neat and readable. I made sure I included EVERY SINGLE contact I had had with the power company in my notes, including dates/times/names. I also shared the logs with the power company.

One of the many RFI problems I had turned out to be a lamp at someone else's home, generating a 40 db over S9 hash across all ham bands, 7 X 24 X 365. I contacted them and they said tough doo doo, this after doing a power off test to verify it was them, the test was done with their help by the way. They said they were not going to correct it under any condition, and too bad for me...

I carefully and politely explained to them that the problem was not going away, and that I was not giving up my hobby of 40 years for their new Bar Light. Further that the problem is a violation of FCC rules, and they needed to correct it... I also added as much detail to my logs as possible from all discussions with the person. Long story short, the FCC sent them a notice, and the problem got corrected. One reason for the note being sent was the logs, and the detail involved.

This is not a happy ending, it is an example of a correction gone wrong. I often wonder if there was something I could have done early on to avoid this sort of interaction. The moral: Always solve the problem with the least force needed... Even with the power companies... We are lucky, our power company is a decent group of folks, our club works with them to triage calls to them. We send out two people to RFI issues and try and help prior to the power company getting called. So far we have saved them lots of truck rolls. They in turn take seriously anything the RFI groups gives them, it works well for all involved. You might also check with your club to see if anything of this nature is ongoing there.

Mario, You could try one more time to contact DTE. If that doesn't work contact the Michican Public service commission and file a complaint about your case. You should start to get results very quickly. All utilities have a regulatory agency whose responsibilities include oversight of the industry. The utilities don't like to get these complaints and are required to solve them as soon as possible,( but only use it as a last resort.)

I've had a very good experience with my power company, Potomac Edison, here in Maryland. They were very responsive and quick to help find my noise problem. You probably need to contact someone higher up. According to the engineer assigned to my case, most power companies are eager to resolve these types of issues. We found a bad arrestor with the ground lead blown off of the arrestor. How did you determine that arrestor is bad? It's hard to tell from the picture.

I finally have heard from DTE a little bit thanks to fellow ham who works there. The PQ department is aware of the issue, but this is on 40kV sub-transmission line and and requires some level of coordination and preparation to take it down. The winter is not helping much either. Another cold blast is heading our way!

Copyright 2000-2016 eHam.net, LLC
eHam.net is a community web site for amateur (ham) radio operators around the world.
Contact the site with comments or questions.
WEBMASTER@EHAM.NETSite Privacy Statement